Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander is hailing a rewrite of the expired No Child Left Behind standards as the largest “devolution of power in 25 years,” citing a Wall Street Journal editorial. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation this week.
Most states already have waivers exempting them from the Bush-era education accountability system. But Sen. Alexander, who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, says the law had to be fixed because states are still jumping through hoops.
“Governors were having to play mother-may-I, coming to Washington to get permission to put in a teacher evaluation program or to come up with a way to fix a low performing school,” Alexander told reporters gathered on a conference call. “This will end that.”
In broad terms, testing will still be mandated by the federal government. But instead of prescribing a turnaround program for stuggling schools and districts, that would be left up to individual states.
Alexander, a former U.S. Secretary of Education, argues states know best what their students need. His
proposal, known as the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, passed with comfortable majorities in both chambers after months of negotiation.
But Tennessee’s delegation was not united. Representatives Marsha Blackburn and Scott DesJarlais
voted against it, saying the rewrite doesn’t
sufficiently curtail the federal government’s role in education.
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